Recently I have been dreaming that I am awake but struggling to keep my eyes open. I want to see more clearly, but cannot. Sometimes trying to see is the best we can offer God. We catch brief glimpses, tiny threads of sacred story weaving through our lives, before we slip back into familiar ruts, old narratives, sleep. We crave assurances of the divine, the felt awareness of being companioned by the holy, yet we miss them daily. A sideways glance from a stranger for some reason pierces our depths; an overheard half-sentence stays with us, like a warning, a love note, an instruction; a brown leaf flutters to the ground and lands on a sprig of green just now arising. For a brief moment we sense the unity of heaven and earth, our mundane existence singing with the life that is Life.
Jesus moves easily in such liminal spaces. Through our locked doors, out on the open road, he reaches out to us, our catalyst and companion. He retells the stories we have made of our lives and his. Cleopas and his friend tell a tale of dashed hopes and an uncertain future; when Jesus tells the same story, it ends with long-loved dreams at last being fulfilled. What do you suppose would be his version of your story? Would it be the one about the same old hurts and disappointments and loss, or would these have to give way, uprooted now by grace? I wonder who he would say you are, not were, and what he might say you are here for. I wonder if your heart would warm to hear his version of your story.
Meeting Jesus along the way changes our story. Something dead in us, in our communities, is coming alive. The holy is here. Whether we notice or not, we are meeting Jesus on the road. We are eating resurrection, swallowing it down, letting it become us. We are being remade. What will the rest of the story be? It’s time to start telling it new.
